No Country for Women - Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 40 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

EVENTS

Errors in the Holy books

The holy books are full of errors, inaccuracies, inconsistencies and contradictions. Here are some examples.

Contradiction 1.
Quran 02: 256 There is no Compulsion in religion.

The verse above is contradicting with the verses below.

Quran 9: 29 Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

Quran 9: 5 And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush.

Quran 47: 4 So, when you meet those who disbelieve smite at their necks till when you have killed and wounded many of them, then bind a bond firmly (on them, i.e. take them as captives). Thereafter (is the time) either for generosity (i.e. free them without ransom), or ransom (according to what benefits Islam), until the war lays down its burden.

Quran 2: 191 And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah is worse than killing. And fight not with them at Al-Masjid-al-Haram (the sanctuary at Makkah), unless they (first) fight you there. But if they attack you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.

Quran 8: 65 O Prophet! rouse the Believers to the fight. If there are twenty amongst you, patient and persevering, they will vanquish two hundred: if a hundred, they will vanquish a thousand of the Unbelievers: for these are a people without-understanding.

Contradiction 2

Quran 2: 29 It is He who created for you all of that which is on the earth. Then He directed Himself to the heaven,

The verse above is contradicting with the verses below. The first verse said God first made the earth , then heaven. But the second verse said God created heaven first, then earth.

Quran 79: 27 – 30 Are you the harder to create, or is the heaven that He built? He raised its ceiling and proportioned it. And He darkened its night and extracted its brightness. And after that He spread the earth.

Contradiction 3

Quran 7: 54 Your guardian-Lord is Allah who created the heavens and earth in Six Days

Quran 10: 3 Verily your Lord is Allah, who created the heavens and earth in Six Days

Quran 11:7 He it is Who created the heavens and earth in Six Days

Quran-25:29: He Who created the heavens and earth and all that is between, in Six Days.

The verses above are contradicting with the verses below.

Quran 41: 9 Is it that ye deny Him who created the earth in Two Days.

Quran 41: 10 He set on the (earth) Mountains standing firm high above it, and bestowed blessing on the earth, and measured therein all things to give them nourishment in due proportion, in FOUR DAYS

Quran 41: 12 So He completed them (heavens) as seven firmaments in Two days.

Contradiction 4

Quran 22: 47 A day in the sight of the Lord is like a thousand years of your reckoning.

Quran-32:5: He arranges (every) affair from the heavens to the earth, then it (affair) will go up to Him, in one Day, the space whereof is a thousand years of your reckoning (i.e. reckoning of our present world’s time).

The above verse says a day is like one thousand years. The verse below says it is like fifty thousand years.

Quran 70: 4 The angels and the spirit ascend unto him in a day the measure whereof is Fifty thousands years.
Contradiction 5

What will be the food in hell? Three verses contradicting with each other.

Quran 88:6 No food will there be for them but a poisonous thorny plant.

Quran 69: 36 Nor any food except filth from the washing of wounds

37: 62-68 Is Paradise a better accommodation or the tree of zaqqum? Indeed, We have made it a torment for the wrongdoers.Indeed, it is a tree issuing from the bottom of the Hellfire,Its emerging fruit as if it was heads of the devils.And indeed, they will eat from it and fill with it their bellies. Then on top of that they will be given a mixture made of boiling water.

Contradiction 6

Quran 96: 2 Has created man from a blood clot (a piece of thick coagulated blood).

Quran 21: 30 Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were joined together as one united piece, then We parted them? And We have made from water every living thing.

Quran 3: 59 Verily, the likeness of ‘Iesa (Jesus) before Allah is the likeness of Adam. He created him from dust, then (He) said to him: “Be!” – and he was.

Quran 19: 67 But does not man remember that We created him before out of nothing?

Quran 11: 61 And to Thamud (people, We sent) their brother Salih (Saleh). He said: “O my people! Worship Allah, you have no other Ilah (God) but Him. He brought you forth from the earth and settled you therein, then ask forgiveness of Him and turn to Him in repentance.

Quran 16:4 He has created man from a sperm-drop

Quran 52: 35 Were they created by nothing, or were they themselves the creators?

Contradiction 7

Quran 4:78 Say: “All things are from Allah.”

Quran 4:79 Whatever good, (O man!) happens to thee, is from Allah; but whatever evil happens to thee, is from thyself.

Scientific Errors:

The sun sets in muddy water.
Quran 18:86 Until, when he reached the setting place of the sun, he found it setting in a spring of black muddy (or hot) water.

Stars are created as missiles to drive away devils.
Quran 67:5 And indeed We have adorned the nearest heaven with lamps, and We have made such lamps (as) missiles to drive away the Shayatin (devils), and have prepared for them the torment of the blazing Fire.

Quarn 37: 6-8 We have indeed decked the lower heaven with beauty (in) the stars. (For beauty) and for guard against all obstinate rebellious evil spirits. They cannot listen to the higher group (angels) for they are pelted from every side.

Sky or heaven is a roof or canopy over the earth.
Quran 21: 32 And We have made the sky a roof withheld (from them). Yet they turn away from its portents.

Quran 31: 10 He hath created the heavens (Skies) without supports (pillars) that ye can see, and hath cast into the earth firm Mountains/Hills, so that it quake not with you; and He hath dispersed.

Quran 2: 22: Who has made the earth your couch, And the heavens (Sky) your canopy.

Mountains prevent earthquakes.
Quran 16:15 And He has set up on the earth mountains standing firm, lest it should shake with you; and rivers and roads; that ye may guide yourselves.

Earth is flat.
Quran 15: 19 And the earth We have spread out (like a carpet); set thereon Mountains firm and immovable;

Quran 78:6-7 Have We not made the earth as a bed,And the mountains as pegs?

Woman was created from man and only eight pairs of cattles were sent to earth.
Quran 39:6 He created you (all) from a single person (Adam); then made from him his wife [Hawwa (Eve)]. And He has sent down for you of cattle eight pairs (of the sheep, two, male and female; of the goats, two, male and female; of the oxen, two, male and female; and of the camels, two, male and female).

Nobody but Allah knows about the gender of a baby.
Quran 31: 34 Verily, Allah! With Him (Alone) is the knowledge of the Hour, He sends down the rain, and knows that which is in the wombs. No person knows what he will earn tomorrow, and no person knows in what land he will die.

Comments

And the answer is always something like “it’s a test of faith” or “the first one is literal, the second isn’t”.

The faithful will tie themselves in knots, defending what is essentially the ravings of goat-herders with sunstroke (Torah), Torah fan fiction with a “Mary-Sue” (idealised version of the author, self-inserted into the story, often as the hero) called Jesus.

And then, a reboot (like the new Teen Wolf, or new Star Trek) with all the clunky original stuff, plagiarised and slightly reworded, at the beginning, then enters a new wondrous, heroic Mary-Sue called Mohammed.

The fandoms they have split into (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), are like Doctor Who fans, divided over who is a true believer.

There are the fans of the original series and the accompanying holy books novelisations No literature or claim that occurs after the fall of the Prophet of #7, is considered valid.

Then there are those that believe that the films are all relevant too, and that #8 truly was the Second Coming of the messiah truly The Doctor himself, regenerated into a new hope for fankind. He spreads his word through novelisations and audio dramas.

The original believers reject the notion of #8 being added to the canon. They say he existed, was a good man with a blue box and a nice coat, but he wasn’t really the Messiah Doctor. It is considered heretical to view him as in any way significant.

Finally, there are the New Who believers fans, many of who believe that the Doctor has only existed since his 2005 resurrection return to the screens.

They regard the first set of fans as staid and dogmatic, and the second set as accommodationists, believing everything is valid, albeit in a watered-down, feel-good form.

They intend to convert everyone to the new series, novelisations, and Big Finish audio dramas. Anyone who refuses will be struck down roundly mocked for wearing t,shirts with an 80s era Who logo, and mocked for the poor production values of the originals.

When questioned on the legion contradictions, walk-backs, and outright rewriting of canon, all fans stand together in denial!

Wikipedia is different from your other examples in that it does not claim to be inerrant – although even with that I have to make it clear to the freshmen not to use it as a primary source. Wikipedia also is constantly being updated and edited to correct errors. It has a wonderful phrase: “citation needed”.

Some of the escapees from religion, that I know online, refer to it as their new Torah.

They’ve been brought up to view the Torah and Talmud as the source of all knowledge. Leaving that life and not knowing anything about the outside world, it’s handy to have a new source that can tell you anything, especially when it is updated constantly and can be carried in a pocket!

You haven’t even listed all the varieties of Doctor Who fandom. (There’s a shrinking cult of New Adventures diehards, and then there are ecumenical fans.)

There’s something weird about belief in fandom, where people can “believe” something even though they don’t really believe it — suspension of disbelief, I guess? — and I think the same is going on in religion, but it’s been covered up by crazy abusive mind-control stuff.

Kate Orman once described canon as follows:
‘As you know, I consider the question of “What’s canon and what’s not?”
pretty if not utterly meaningless. So I had an interesting moment when I
read “Ground Zero” and, well, didn’t believe it had happened.

‘Now, this sounds rather daft, given the number of “Doctor Who” stories
which have, in fact, happened, ie none. :-)’…

‘I wonder if that’s what people are *really* thinking of when they talk
about canonicity. No amount of intellectualisation can define a gut
feeling like that. If so, there’s no point in debating some logical
definition of canonicity – you either believe it, or not!’

What makes the Doctor Who cults tolerable for others is that Doctor Who fans don’t kill or beat people for refusal to appreciate Doctor Who, and do not demand Doctor Who fandom by law. What makes it OK for the fans is that they know none of it is real, even though they argue about what’s canon.

If religions can behave like that, we can deal with them; they are not a social problem. But they usually can’t (the Church of the FSM, Church of the SubGenius, Discordianism, and some others excepted).

I make this comparison from a particular perspective as someone who has pretty much memorized the plots to every Doctor Who story, *even the really bad ones*, and been seriously involved in fandom.

Some of the episodes are completely incoherent. Some of them are patently offensive, morally speaking. Yet I’ve watched them all — multiple times in most cases. (Can’t skip parts of the holy text, eh?). And I’ve retconned them with reinterpretations which I like better but which are patently not justifiable by the original text. (And so have later episode writers — in some cases creating long-running arguments over whose interpretation was right, and whether the reinterpretation was ‘canon’!) Inconsistencies are everywhere, and one of the favorite fan activities is retconning them (explaining them away).

Arguments at conventions over whether particular episodes are good get quite heated, with some fans being unwilling to admit that *any* of Doctor Who is bad.

This is very similar to how religion and theology operate, but they seem to think it’s actually real, rather than alternate universe material. Which is frightening!

I have been trying to encourage people to read the Koran for years, I have to say without much success. I fear many people, especially Christians, do not even read their own religion’s texts let alone those of any other religion.

The practice of forcing children to learn religion at school seems to have what must be the desired effect of putting them off for life so they hear the lies they are told by their holy men, usually men, and just accept it as the truth.

I hope you have more success in pointing out the inconsistencies, contradictions and downright lies in the Koran as I. I say downright lies and as an example offer 9:30. Although Christians believe the messiah is the son of their god, I have seen not a scrap of evidence to suggest Jews have ever claimed Ezra (Uzair) to be the son of their god. Either the suggestion came from an insignificant sect or, more probably, it was made up to support hatred of Jews.

So true, every public education institution and library should have copies of the Quran, Bible, Book of Mormon and Hindu and Buddhist texts for students to browse. This allows them to witness for themselves the contradictions and stupid misconceptions regarding the physical world for themselves without the direction of indoctrinating charlatans (elders, ministers, …etc).

These are indeed the most useful tools for discrediting and turning people from religion.

I believe I’ve even read of Richard Dawkins making a similar statement to this, though I was unable to find it in time to use here.

Ugh, I just finished reading the Quran last month. Thanks for this, though. My main reaction was just how boring and repetitive the whole thing was. Oy. How many times can you describe the torments of hell or the apparently very limited joys of heaven? And all the war-mongering about slaughtering unbelievers and how wrong everyone else was? Not quite “printed chloroform,” but only because it’s much shorter than the Book of Mormon. And I now cannot believe people who claim that the Quran is the most majestical, poetical, lyrical, spiritually enlightened, pure thing ever written. You’ve GOT to be shitting me on that.

Did a Bible study course in the 70s, saw the extremely gross misconceptions and errors in it, then tackled the Quran, became totally disgusted with not only the contradictions, but the vile attitude towards it’s neighboring faiths (Abrahamic based), then became softened by the Hindu Upanishads, which were a refreshing break, but still contained massive misconceptions about life and reality.
Conclusion: Religion is the deliberate production of lies by usurpers for instant gain in their lifetimes, that become folklore and complete world-views after their death as those they usurped pass on their continuing belief that they weren’t being used.

Moses, Mohammad, Jesus, etc… were such great confidence tricksters/usurpers who used their followers for their own gains, that the followers never realized how much they were being used, thus they continued to preach the lies of their heroes/userpers.

Well some bastard did it. Probably doesn’t matter who.
It’s illustrative to look at more recent inventions, like scientology and moronism, where you can still clearly see the charlatan behind the curtain.

The Upanishads are an interesting example, because they were a set of allegorical reinterpretations by philosophers of the Vedas — and the Vedas, the ur-text, are *DEAD* boring. The Upanishads do hold up better than most stuff of the period, or later for that matter, though. The Ramayana and Mahabarata are decently plotted, but immoral by modern standards.

I welcome you with the Islamic greeting “May the mercy and peace of Allah be upon you” My dear brother I am very happy that you are seeker of truth but I think you don’t read THO HOLLY QURAN carefully and with open mind. I appreciate you to read the book of Dr. Zakir Naik named “THE QURAN & MODERN SCIENCE COMPATIBLE OR INCOMPATIBLE”. Perhaps, this will be your first step to understand the TRUTH, insha-allah. If you have any question or misconception about islam then please send me at “mdshahidakhtar03@gmail.com” I will be pleased to help you. I will pray for you to be on straight path

Saying that the Sun revolves around the Earth is not really an error from a mathematical point of view. Motion is relative.
The only advantage of saying that the Sun is the centre of the Solar System is that calculation gets far less complicated.
Not really a strong argument.

“The only advantage of saying that the Sun is the centre of the Solar System is that calculation gets far less complicated.”

As long as physics only contains the laws of motion, maybe. Once you add in concepts like “conservation of mass-energy”, there is not resonable way the sun could orbit the earth, because the earth does not have sufficient gravitational pull to change the path of the sun in that fashion.

Wikipedia is a very useful resource, but it is hardly complete. Nor is it unbiased. For a while, I was a fairly serious editor (although the Wikipedia admins did not approve giving me article-deletion privileges). I had some strange encounters with UFO enthusiasts and people pushing various medical quackery.

Everyday words that turn up in books and magazines, on ads on a billboard, or on the side of a bus, they’re literally a foreign language. These are people who’ve grown up in America or England who cannot communicate in English, who don’t know what the Superbowl is, or what “buy now, pay later” means.

Bias and completeness aren’t particularly important when you’re trying to find out what a shark is, or who Madonna is.

Trust me, these people make the Amish look integrated and modern. Despite attempts at banning the internet entirely, smartphoneS are catching on, and causing no end of “trouble”, as people find out. that there’s a whole world outside their walls. There are regular iPhone burnings to strike fear into people.

Truth is power, knowledge is strength, and that terrifies the men at the top.

When I was working in Egypt, I bought a paperback translation of the Koran to learn what it was about. When I was spotted reading it I was given a lecture on how you couldn’t read the Koran in anything but Arabic and having a heathen copy was a sin. The book ‘disappeared’ a couple of days later and I always wondered if it was destroyed (surely evening destroying a copy of the Koran is a sin?) or secretly read it to improve their English.
In fairness the more educated boss had a quiet word with me saying he admired my attempt to learn…

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